Drafted 14 May 2012 at 10:23:29 BST; can't remember whether I got to deliver it! Colleagues, Michael Edwards ATOS East And a Nottingham City Councillor. I wanted to get in on before the motions referring to what local authorities can do, because of the progress we have made in recent years and indeed in recent months. With the extra money and the extra powers we have had, we have been able to make radical change, most notably for our bus network. We were able to arrest the decline in numbers of bus passenger journeys. Significant parts of the city centre, which is part of my ward, have been pedestrianized, other parts made public transport only, and indeed the city centre is designed as one large bus station. Planning in general has been against out of town shopping. Bus lanes expanded. A tram has been introduced on and is exceeding targets. The publicly owned bus company has been making a surplus, and joint ticketing has been introduced, despite the Dept for Trade. This all started with a radical appeal to the centre ground. The centre ground cos only recently have the majority of our households owned cars. Radical cos the conventional thinking was for huge road development in the city centres in the sixties. Some of that damage was done, and only recently mitigated. In the seventies, a Zone and Collar scheme introduced by three councillors playing darts on a dartboard.
In the eighties the city council’s district rates were doubled to pay for free transport for older people and the less mobile. A campaign was run to keep the bus company public. Then the local Transport plans And now, last month, Nottingham became only the second city to introduce a congestion charge. The revenues are being used There was more we could have done and there is more to do. But green, pro mass transport planning has transformed the look and feel of the city. And made it more equipped to meet the challenges of the future we face with climate change and erratic oil prices. And by and large popular. It shows what a radical appeal to the centre-ground can achieve.